Lessons We Learned From Our Highest-Converting Content

Twelve hundred eighty-eight.

That's the number of blog post that have been published by Wishpond over the past 5 years.

And each and every one of those blog posts represents an effort from one of our authors to research trends, dig into data, and provide a comprehensive solution to whatever topic they decided to write on.

But unfortunately not all of those posts worked out very well.

In fact, once you've published as many articles as us, it's almost expected that some will fall by the wayside and into the proverbial "content graveyard" - that is, articles that receive little to no traffic, and even fewer conversions.

In other words, a content marketer's worst nightmare.

There's a silver lining of course, in that for every ghostly article, there's another that made it to the big leagues. The front page of Google, to the Mecca of search.

And those are the articles that we're going to talk about today. Specifically, those high converting articles that, despite looking the same as our other articles, continue to bring in revenue month after month.

We've analyzed our highest converting content and brought you 4 key takeaways which can help you to create higher converting content today.

I hope you enjoy!

Write How-to Articles

When searching through our list of highest converting articles, one phrase kept appearing again and again, "how to".

How-to articles have and continue to dominate the top spot amongst our highest converting content. And we don't expect that to change anytime soon.

That's because how to articles are actionable by nature. They provide exact instructions on how to get started rather than dabbling in theory or best practices.

Particularly if the how to article that you write is a walkthrough of how to use your product, you can expect these types of articles to convert well.

Take a look at how one of our how to articles ranks on Google for the search phrase "how to run a photo contest on Facebook".

Based on our research, we've found that this how to article converts well for the following reasons:

It perfectly answers a user's query on "how to run a photo contest on Facebook"

The blog post is a walkthrough of how to do something using our product

There are relevant, product-focused CTAs that call a user to action

When writing your own how to article, consider these tips to get you started:

Include "how to" in the article title

Break the article down into easy to read sections (think list post style)

By using real life examples combined with relevant call-to-action's allowing users to convert, readers are able to get a good sense of what each contest looks and feels like at a quick glance.

Another reason example based content works so well, especially if it's connected to your core product or service, is that it naturally lends itself to a bottom of the funnel CTA like a free trial or consultation.

Take a look at this article where we display a landing page along with a CTA below to get started with our landing page editor:

When getting started with content that uses examples, try to:

Include "example" in the headline of the article

Add a relevant CTA underneath each example

Use original examples whenever possible (this will help draw in more backlinks)

Find examples that are directly related to your product or service

For more examples of what example content looks like, check out these additional articles:

Use Inline CTA's

It took us a lot of trial and error to eventually realize that banners and big bold CTA's within content didn't actually convert that well.

In fact, what we found was that relevant, unobtrusive inline CTA's actually convert much better. They also allow us to segment users based on what they download, and provide a much better user experience.

You might be asking yourself "what exactly does an inline CTA look like?"

Well take a look at this example inline CTA underneath a content section:

Notice that rather than having a giant image or flashing banner, we simply have a bonus tip with a link to access the additional resource.

Optimize For Long Tail Keywords

Outside of the obvious on-page factors that were resulting in higher page conversions, we wanted to dig a little deeper and see if there were any discoverability factors that differentiated high converting articles from low converting articles.

And what we found (not surprisingly), even amongst our high traffic articles, was that articles that ranked for long tail high intent keywords converted better than articles that ranked for short keyphrases with low intent keywords.

Take a look at this snapshot from Google's Search Console that looked at the phrases being searched to find two different articles. (Note: I can't give away exact conversion data, but I will say that one article converts 9200% better than the other one).

Low converting article's search terms:

High converting article's search terms:

What this data tells us is that although the first article receives a ton of traffic, the fact that it ranks highly for low intent keywords means that it's likely to convert at a much lower rate than the second article.

Also notice the frequency of "how to" in the top search phrases used to find the page.

This indicates that users searching for the page are looking for a specific solution, and therefore are naturally more ready to convert compared with the previous article where some of the top searches included "cool prizes" and "prize ideas".

Key takeaway?

Optimize your pages for long tail, actionable keywords.

Pro Tip: To see what your queries are being used to find your pages, login to Google's Search Console and click on "search analytics" on left sidebar.

Click on the "no filter" drop down menu and select "filter pages".

Enter the URL you want to search for and press "Filter".

Select "Queries".

This will reveal your list of top searches for that article!

Summary

Hopefully this article has given you some insights into what we've learned from our highest converting content. To recap, some of the key lessons that we took away from analyzing over 1200 articles is:

Write How To Posts

Use Examples

Use Inline CTA's

Optimize for Long Tail Keywords

Is there a tip that you found really useful? What types of content converts well for you?

I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

Written by Kevin Ho

Kevin is the VP of Marketing at Wishpond. Follow him on Twitter @mayoshrimp.